


Happenstance

by paon



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, don't be me kids, including a lot of characters just to be safe, not everyone in the tags is guaranteed to appear or have a significant role, writing things and posting them as you go is not a recommended means of fic-writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-03 18:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6622417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paon/pseuds/paon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chat Noir has come to the belated realization that Ladybug nearly gave up her Miraculous to Hawk Moth-- for Adrien Agreste. So, he decides to do something about it. (Post-Volpina, shamelessly self-indulgent reveal fic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Realization

**Author's Note:**

> Lord have mercy, I am rusty at fic-writing. I haven't done this in so long, but I have had so many ideas for ML and this fandom is so sweet and talented so here I am. Giving you yet another reveal fic. Probably. I haven't fully decided where I'm taking this, it was mostly a spur of the moment decision and stream of consciousness stress-write at 7am. This chapter is very short, mostly for the reasons mentioned above, and to give me a chance to get a feel for where I'm going with the story. Enjoy? ♥

At the time, he hadn't been able to stop and think about how scared she'd been for Adrien. But now as he let his transformation crackle off of him like lightning, unthinkingly reaching into the air to capture Plagg in both hands, Chat Noir realized with startling clarity that Ladybug had nearly given up her Miraculous. 

For him.

He had almost talked to her. Almost wanted to ask her, why did you come back to check on me? Because while he was behind the door of his bathroom, she couldn't see him, so he could hide behind the confidence Chat Noir's mask gave him and have the courage to ask her. He was just another civilian, and while he knew she cared about the citizens of Paris there had been a definite marked level of difference in her when it came to Adrien. Her defensive nature, the way she immediately went after Volpina with his illusioned double, the way she stopped thinking clearly and nearly gave her Miraculous right up without any kind of fight. Just to save him.

Stunned, he moved silently to set Plagg on the corner of his desk, the kwami grumbling about lovestruck teenagers and some other collection of words Adrien wasn't listening to. One hand pat the Godlike creature on the head and he continued on, dropping face-first onto his mattress and staying there. One second, two seconds, three seconds--

"Plagg?" The sound was muffled by his sheets, but the catlike kwami's ears swiveled toward the sound, responding with a wordless sound of his own. "She almost gave up her Miraculous for me," he thought aloud, turning his head sideways and drawing his arms up, folded under his head. Plagg made another wordless sound, and Adrien pushed himself up on his hands to stare over his shoulder. 

"She almost gave up her Miraculous," he stated again. Still largely unfazed, Plagg just settled in a sit on the desk facing his charge with an uninterested expression. "For me."

"You're repeating yourself," Plagg finally intoned, and Adrien shook his head, moving quickly to face the kwami better.

"That's dangerous, isn't it?" He seemed to have some kind of idea running through his mind, and Plagg neither liked the look of it nor cared to inquire further. But there was Adrien, giving him this prompted look, like he needed the affirmation of someone else telling him the blatantly obvious, and damned be the harbinger of Bad Luck if he wasn't weak to his kitten's figurative puppy eyes.

"Without her Miraculous, Ladybug would just be another civilian," Plagg said carefully.

"And Chat Noir can't do much to save Paris without Ladybug," Adrien continued, still with that look where he wanted Plagg to help him complete his thoughts. The kwami sighed, floating across the space from Adrien's desk to his bed and settling neatly on the hand Adrien immediately extended toward him, palm upward.

"Ladybug and Chat Noir are two halves of a whole," he admonished. "Creation and Destruction, Yin and Yang. She needs you, you need her." He rolled his eyes at the dumbstruck gooey expression on Adrien's face. "And that's not accounting for your disgusting human obsession with her."

Adrien's thumb shifted and rubbed a tiny circle in a spot just below Plagg's left ear, and the kwami's eyes slid shut as an unwitting purr emanated from him. 

"I need to talk to her," he said, and Plagg was too blissed out by the massage to argue. "This is a perfect opportunity for her to see that it's better if we know each other without the masks."

The purr spluttered and Plagg reluctantly pushed Adrien's thumb away.

"What? Adrien, hasn't she told you she doesn't want that?" But Adrien wasn't listening. He'd scooped Plagg neatly into both his palms and was placing him on the bed beside him and standing, pacing around the room nattering off a great many thoughts and ideas. Plagg zipped up to eye-level and followed, berating, but his charge continued to ignore him, and eventually the kwami sank back to the mattress in frustration. 

"Tomorrow night during patrol, I'll surprise her," Adrien stated with finality, hands braced on his hips as he pivoted back to his kwami. "And then we'll never have to worry about her throwing away her Miraculous over me again!!"


	2. Halt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Adrien is a horrible procrastinator, but he discovers that Ladybug likes cinnamon streusel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fully did not anticipate any sort of feedback on this fic, and for those of you lovelies who read, left kudos, and commented, I'm super sorry for the wait on this chapter!! I don't, truthfully, have a lot of direction in this story so I was sitting on several ideas and struggling with how best to put them into action to head somewhere with this. This chapter is also a fair bit longer than the first. I don't think this fic will be super long, but I do plan for at least another chapter or two. Maybe more, it will depend on several things, most of which centering on my free time and creativity. ♥ Thank you for reading!!

Except, he hadn't managed to tell her the following night. In fact, "tomorrow night" had come, gone, and now it was nearly two weeks later and Adrien was absolutely going out of his mind. Thursday evening would find him, as such, face-down on his mattress with his feet hanging off one end and his arms stretched over his head, shrieking with wild abandon into the blankets.

Plagg had grown quite tired of the scene, and his lack of cheese, so he had found a comfortable spot in the very center of Adrien's pillow and was watching from there, smoothing a whisker.

"You've done this every afternoon for the past week and a half, Adrien," he claimed, not bothering to look at his charge as his shouting quieted. "Why don't you stop screaming and do something productive for a change?"

"Oh easy for _you_ to say," Adrien spat, sitting up and glowering at the kwami. "You're, what, ancient? You've probably seen this a hundred thousand times." He couldn't help the frustration in his tone, and oddly, Plagg didn't seem to mind it.

"In every kitten," came a remarkably mild response, and Plagg lifted himself off the pillow to float above Adrien's head. "I have a nasty habit of picking difficult kids, and Chat Noir has a nasty habit of falling for Ladybug. What's the phrase? "Them's the breaks"?"

Adrien sighed gustily and dropped his face back into his mattress. 

"But, you really should do something," the kwami continued, settling atop Adrien's perfectly styled hair. "She reads you like an open book, and Chat Noir has been anything but his smarmy confidence lately." Adrien swatted him off his head.

"Yeah, I know. I've been running with my tail between my legs from her every time I try to bring it up. I'd say it's what love does to you, but you don't love anything but cheese and I don't think you can get nervous of what cheese is gonna think of you when all you're gonna do is eat it." Plagg made a sound of mock offense as Adrien shoved himself to a seated position, kicking off his shoes in the process. He frowned at his ankles, and Plagg took this opportunity to remind him of the time that had passed since his last wedge of Camembert. Perhaps less so out of dutiful friendship and moreso out of a lack of desire to continue to be bothered, Adrien got up and obtained a wheel of the odorous cheese and set a wedge out for the kwami. After a moment's thought, he set out another and smiled, dropping into his computer chair with a grin.

Plagg didn't see it until he was halfway through the second wedge.

 

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

 

Somewhere in his time around Ladybug, he learned that her kwami liked cookies. While she hadn't designated a dislike for the sprite's chosen edible, he couldn't know for sure if she would like the same, so he didn't go for chocolate chip (though the inclination had been there-- he considered scouring the city for red-colored cookies with chocolate chips, so they would be Ladybug Cookies). Instead, he forewent cookies alltogether and went for muffins, and got a small assortment. He had entertained the idea of going to Marinette's bakery for them, both to see his classmate and because their bakery made some of the best goods in Paris, but he didn't trust himself to not blab about his intentions. To this day he had managed to keep his raging crush on Ladybug a secret even from Nino, he wasn't about to blow that over a bakery run.

The point was, now transformed and atop their common rendesvous point of the Eiffel Tower, Chat Noir had in one hand a small box with three muffins in it (one blueberry, one banana nut, and one cinnamon streusel). In his other hand was his baton, slid open to its phone function and dialing Ladybug. she didn't answer, and he frowned, but settled on the beam of the tower he was standing on to wait. 

He tried again every half hour until she answered.

"Evening, My Lady~," he crooned, trying his best to keep the nervous quiver from his tone. Ladybug was having none of it, her expression startled once it swam into view (at first, the feed had been a blur of pink, and then a blur of motion as she zipped around on the Yo-Yo hollering "Just a minute, kitty!").

"what are you doing calling me so suddenly? I'm just about to go on patrol, did you need something?" He didn't seem to be distressed, or endangered, so her tone was flat. He put on his best winning smile, flashing his teeth.

"Only My Lady's smile and company, if she would humor me," he began, and held up the box of muffins before she could protest. "I got you something, and I'd like to talk." 

Startled by his honesty, Ladybug's eyebrows shot toward her hairline and she puffed her cheeks.

"Patrol, kitty," she warned, and he waved a hand dismissively.

"After," he admonished, and then held one finger up. "I could help." She rolled her eyes. 

"Even if I say no you're just going to find me and follow me around, hurry up. I'm starting at the Louvre." She hung up before he had a chance to reply, and he slid the baton back solid with a shaky smile. 

 

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

 

It was simultaneously the longest and shortest patrols, for both of them. Chat Noir had been anxious for well over a week now, since shortly after the incident with Volpina, and Ladybug hadn't known what to do about the sudden onset of nerves in her partner. He had never been anything but confident, to the point of being nearly obnoxious, so his sudden shift in demeanor was unsettling, at best. He had been on the brink of telling her something, as far as she could tell, and from around the same time frame, but kept falling short and leaving before he could, and that threw her mind into an absolute fit. Volpina had disguised herself as a Miraculous holder. Had Chat Noir decided that maybe he didn't want to be Ladybug's partner after all? That there were greener pastures? Could Marinette, even as Ladybug, have finally fallen short of the bottom rung of the ladder?

Chat Noir was simply trying to start a conversation he'd been trying to have for two weeks, and finally forcing himself to do something about. No big. It wasn't like he was about to tell his crime-fighting partner, who was immensely opposed to the idea of them knowing each other's civillian identities, who he was. No problem at all.

He was going to be sick.

As they swung and vaulted back to the highest point of the Louvre building, Ladybug huffed a sigh and set her hands on her hips, turning straight to him without hardly giving either of them a chance to settle. 

"So?" She was prompt, but gentle. "You wanted to talk."

A shiver went up his spine and he felt his forehead break out in a sweat, but he smiled through it.

"Yes," he said, checking the box of muffins to make sure the parcel hadn't been too jostled in their patrol. He had been careful, and patrol had been brief-- Hawkmoth seemed to have taken the day off. "I did." He pursed his lips and offered her the box. "But I also got you these."

She considered the box, then his expression, and reached out to take it with both hands, narrowing her eyes at him as she slid the lid open. Finally peering in at its contents, her mouth formed a tiny "o".

"...Chat, are these muffins?" Her tone was confused, but not negative. "You got me muffins?" She opened the box fully, now, a laugh in her tone. His shoulders tensed and he curled his arms toward his chest.

"Erm, yes. As I recall, your kwami likes cookies. My kwami likes cheese, but I'll be damned if I want to _think_ about Camembert or eating it, so... I went for something similar but not the same." He was cringing, now. "Let me guess, you're actually allergic to gluten, or something. I've made a horrible mistake and something or everything in that box could kill you."

There was an actual laugh now, and Ladybug was waving a hand as she claimed a muffin and shifted to sit cross-legged atop the building.

"Stop your rambling and sit down," she chided, resting the box on one knee while she peeled the wrapper from her chosen muffin (the cinnamon streusel one, he'd have to remember that). Watching her for a moment, he did as he was told, stiffly settling himself to sit on his knees across from her. She took a bite of the muffin, and raised her eyebrows expectantly at him. She repeated herself. "So?"

"--Right, yes," he stammered, smacking both his hands to his face and dragging them down his mask, hooking them slightly on the bottom of his jaw. "Talking." Ladybug made an affirmative sound, already halfway through the muffin. It seemed he had made a good choice. He steeled himself.

"...I'm going to tell you something," he claimed, and she slowed in her chewing. Before she could swallow and protest, he raised his hands. "And you can't tell me not to," he continued. "It has to be said, or I might actually scream until I die." She didn't take another bite of the muffin, setting it down in the box carefully and licking the crumbs off her fingers. Lord, but she was precious.

"...Kitty, you're scaring me a little," she admitted, and he smiled, maybe a little too-widely at her.

"I'm a little scared, too," he agreed. They both lapsed into silence, and he took in a slow breath, held it, and closed his eyes.

"Ladybug," he started, and looked down at his right hand. He raised his eyes to her, and then his hand, fingers splayed. She didn't quite seem to understand the gesture, but he could see the subtle shift in her expression as she tried to decipher its meaning. Luckily, she had also raised the muffin back to her mouth and taken a second bite. So when he huffed a sigh and set his thumb and forefinger around his ring, and realization snapped in place, her eyes widened but she couldn't swallow fast enough to cut him off. "I'm--"

\--Instead, she just slammed the rest of the muffin into his mouth.

They sat in startled silence for a long moment, and then Ladybug remembered to swallow her mouthful of muffin.

"...we're sitting on the Louvre," she explained when her mouth wasn't full of cinnamon and sugar. Chat hadn't quite processed the situation enough to chew, so he just made a curious sound as she reclaimed her hand from his mouth. "...the Louvre, which has twenty-four hour surveillance." Belatedly understanding, his hand came away from his ring, and he swallowed approximately half a muffin without chewing. He winced.

"...I'll get you another cinnamon muffin," he offered. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...ah, so I was terrible and left off without any form of closure, here. Thankfully, barring anything catastrophic, the next chapter should come much quicker than this one. Also, I suppose, if any of you want to find me outside of here, you can find me on tumblr at ghosthotel. A cursory glance will show you that I got dragged into Osomatsu-san hell, which shamefully is a lot of the reason why this chapter took so long for me to grind out and post. I'll be better, I promise. /)___(\


End file.
